The Fear
by BrainySmurf6
Summary: "The world without Booth had been painful and unfamiliar and terrifying.  Now, her biggest fear was returning to it."  Oneshot request, drabbly.


_A/N: Hey guys…just a quick oneshot I wrote my friend Ellie (if you're on Tumblr, you probably know her. If you don't, take a look at your life and choices). She requested a oneshot based on the quick moment in "Bullet in the Brain" after Heather Taffet gets her head shot off, when Brennan basically pushes her way through the crowd toward Booth and says she's so glad he's okay. This is what happened._

The Fear

"What about these, Bones?" Booth pulled a onesie from the rack, grinning delightedly, and pinched the foot of the garment, the pitch of his voice heightening into the gleeful, cutesy tone he used in stores like these. "Lookit at the cute little feet..."

Brennan scrunched her nose up in distaste. "You aren't going to talk to the baby like that, are you? Because verbal development-"

"I know, I know," Booth cuts off the frequent reprimand. Still, he jiggled the onesie hopefully. "What do you think?"

With ease, Brennan plucked the item from Booth's hand and hung it back on the rack. "I've told you, Booth. I don't want to encourage our daughter to play with bears."

"But they're not ferocious bears, Bones. They're cute. See…" He pointed. "Smiling."

Brennan just shrugged, unflappable. "It's deceptive. Babies are easily impressionable, Booth, and I don't want her to grow up thinking of bears as some…adorable plaything rather than a frequently savage animal."

"Fine, fine, fine…" Booth turned his attention back to the racks, lowering his head so Brennan wouldn't see him smiling. "Here, butterflies! Nothing savage about butterflies. "

Arching an eyebrow, Brennan met his eyes. "Didn't you say you find them creepy ever since you found out they eat decomposed bodies?"

The smile fell, and, with an exaggerated shudder, Booth put the outfit back. "Okay, maybe no live creatures…" With determination, he flicked through the rack, then smiled smugly. "_Hearts_. See? Pretty little hearts."

Brennan's eyes barely grazed the latest onesie. "That's not an accurate depiction of a human heart, Booth. I don't want to confuse her."

Sighing dramatically, Booth replaced the outfit. "I give up. Go ahead, get an outfit with cartoon skeletons or…microscopes or whatever-"

Brennan recognized that she was being made fun of, and in retaliation, she snatched an outfit she'd noticed earlier and held it up for Booth's appraisal. "How about this one?"

He visibly recoiled, eyes wide. "That's not funny, put it back."

Brennan couldn't keep a pleased smile from her face. "Well, I disagree."

"You wouldn't think it was funny if I was suggesting one with _snakes_…"

Glancing at the image on the front of the onesie, Brennan replied reasonably, "Well, I hardly think there are over four hundred types of poisonous _clowns_."

"Just…put it back, would you?" Booth was physically drawing away from the outfit, his whole body tense.

"Fine…" Brennan relented. As soon as the onesie was hung up, Booth took her hand, gently tugging her away from the rack, as though mere proximity to the image of a cartoon clown was too much for him. "I don't understand why you're so afraid of them."

"I've told you this, Bones. It's _hate_, not fear."

She gave him a look. "_Booth_."

There was a beat, then, "Fine, okay, it's fear. I have _one_ fear. Maybe it's an irrational one, but there you go. Just like you and snakes."

Brennan nodded noncommittally and fell silent as Booth resumed studying safer options for baby clothes. Privately, though, she was thinking of all the times she'd dealt easily with snakes when Booth wasn't around.

No, her one recurring fear was not snakes. And it wasn't irrational.

~(B*B)~

Before she met Booth, the longest, most frightening time of her life had been the two days she was stuffed in a car trunk, sure she was going to die there.

But now there had been longer, more terrifying periods of time. The fourteen hours Booth spent trapped on a ship by the grave digger. The three days she sat by his hospital bed, waiting for him to claw his way out of a coma.

The two weeks they thought Booth was dead.

She remembered the feeling of those two weeks. The loss of him, the physical pain of it. For two weeks, Brennan had lived on the edge of tears, of panic, of utter helplessness.

The world without Booth had been painful and unfamiliar and terrifying. Now, her biggest fear was returning to it.

It hit her all the time, that fear. If Booth complained about a headache, Brennan's blood ran cold, probabilities of his tumor returning echoing in her head. If he was late returning from a crime scene alone, she imagined attacks or gunfire.

Brennan was aware that, sometimes, the fear rendered her irrational. It certainly had the morning Heath Taffet was murdered.

There had been numerous appeals for the woman known as the Gravedigger, but Brennan (along with Hodgins, and everyone else at the lab) had never attended. The initial trial had been difficult enough, and Booth was always quick with the assurance that the appeals were standard and groundless.

So the morning of Taffet's final appeal, Brennan was at the lab, attempting to forget about what was happening in the courthouse across town.

She knew Booth was planning on being there, and at that time, a day without seeing Booth was nearly as appealing as skipping out on Taffet's aggrandizing speeches.

Their conversation in Booth's car, her confession and his rejection, had been the previous week, and things had been hard. There was a tense uncertainty between them that had never existed, a vague sort of apology in Booth's eyes that hurt Brennan to look at.

Then came Hodgins, running by her office door, his eyes wild with adrenaline. "Shooting outside the Taffet trial."

Brennan's whole body went cold. _Who? _was the first word from her mouth, but Hodgins was already gone, tearing towards the forensic platform, where someone had connected to a local news feed on one of the large monitors.

There was no rational reason for her to assume Booth was involved; Tafett was the obvious target. Aside from that, there were likely a hundred or more spectators gathering outside the courthouse. The odds were overwhelming in Booth's favor.

But Brennan could only picture him, lying on the ground, bleeding out. Her hands began to ache with the phantom, years old feel of his blood coming quickly, too quickly, to stain her palms. Brennan's stomach rolled sickeningly, her whole body beginning to tremble.

Some minute bit of logic penetrated the dizzying fog of fear, and Brennan forced herself to stand, to walk, to breathe. She needed information, and to get that, she needed to be on the platform.

The others were gathered there already, staring fixedly at the frenzied news feed. She walked up in time to see them replaying the moment of the shot: Taffet's head exploding, her body keeling over. In a strangled voice, Brennan managed one question, "Who?"

She meant _who else was shot?_, but Hodgins answered, his voice almost awed, "No idea. It came out of nowhere, they said."

Some dim, rational part of her brain should have understood, then, that if anything had happened to Booth, if there was any sort of danger, the others would have said so. Instead, she heard herself asking in a tight, desperate voice, "Was anyone else hurt?"

"One shot," Hodgins said, shaking his head. "They knew what they were aiming for…"

Angela, though, turned away from the monitor, brow knitted in concern as she looked at Brennan. "Sweetie, are you alright?"

Cam, too, turned toward Brennan. "There's going to be a lot of brain matter and skull fragments, we should probably get down there-" Her voice trailed off; Brennan was already gone, moving purposefully toward the door of the lab.

Again, logic was out of her grasp. Hodgins had said there'd been one shot; the television was reporting no more than Heather Taffet's death. Yet that fear hadn't let go. It continued to engulf her, a physical tightening around her lungs and throat, until Brennan had driven to the scene, harshly shoved her way through the crowd, and got Booth in her vision.

As soon as she saw him, control returned, and Brennan was able to forget about the fact that she felt like crying. She was able to resist the urge to throw herself into Booth's arms. She was able to do her job, to focus, and to remember that things had changed between them.

Until, of course, an explosion on Jacob Brodsky's land had brought the fear screaming back again. It was inevitable; hers was a fear that constantly returned.

~(B*B)~

"_Pigs_," Booth stated triumphantly, brandishing yet another onesie. "No arguments, Bones, I know for a fact you love pigs."

Slowly, Brennan's lips curled into a smile. "I have no objections to a pig."

Booth let out a whoop and tossed the outfit into their cart. "Yes! Great. Our daughter will have one thing to wear, anyway."

Brennan, though, was glancing around the store in interest. "You mentioned skeletons…was that a real outfit? Or were you being facetious?"

Letting out a bark of laughter, Booth just shook his head. "Definitely facetious, Bones."

"Oh," she answered, a look of mild disappointment on her face. "Well. We could always return to the clown one…"

Scowling, Booth retorted, "Only if you want me buying one covered in snakes."

"There _aren't _any covered in snakes," Brennan observed reasonably. "Suggesting most rational people agree that it's not suitable."

"Still. No clowns." He put an arm around her, subtly steering her away from the rack that contained the clown prints. "I'm allowed one stupid fear, Bones. We've all got them."

Brennan shifted toward Booth, resting her head on his shoulder for a moment. He shifted slightly, tightening his arm around her, letting her lean on him as they walked. His grip on her was solid and secure.

In moments like this, her fear was dormant. In these moments, Booth was so present, so consuming, it was impossible to imagine a world without him.

"I guess we do."


End file.
